Mice and Friends
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [post-book] Slim's dog has a new litter, and George receives one of the little ones.


**A/N:** Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, B75 – write about a human/animal interaction.

* * *

**Mice and Friends**

They felt even more soft now. Which was foolishness, really, because he wasn't as hard handed as Lennie nor as uncontrolled…

George shook his head. It never did to think ill of the dead, and Lennie hadn't belonged in an adult form. He'd belonged in the small, fragile body of a child – or, better, a ghost whose touch could only leave a passing chill. But the stories of eternal children and of spirits that had failed to pass on were simply that: stories, and myth.

Stories of dreams had ended up like that as well.

Or, maybe, it had been his own sense of sentimentality that chained him down.

Candy had prodded and pleaded. Begged, even. Finally, George had handed over their savings – his and Lennie's – and told him to take old Crooks and scram. Candy'd done so: he was an old man, on his last leg, and Crooks was only sinking further down. He was more tolerant than the other ranchers. The two of them would get along.

George waved them off, and the last remnants of his dream. If it'd all gone well, it would have been him and Lennie with them. But it hadn't. He'd been too careless. Too stuck in a dream. He hadn't been watching Lennie like he should have been.

And Lennie had just been a big baby thinking George could fix everything.

It was a new litter of puppies. And a new wife, very different to the old. George had never liked her. Curley's first wife. Still, it was a sad fate for anyone. For Lennie too, to become a murderer because he was a clumsy child in a too strong adult's body.

People like that didn't belong anywhere, and it had been George's mistake to try and find a place he did. George's mistake to become so attached.

But he'd become that attached, and now that Lennie was gone, he couldn't bring himself to leave.

Even when Curley had gotten his revenge. Robbed of the chance of letting him suffer in life, he'd strung up the body in the barn until Crooks had been ordered to take it down. Or maybe he'd taken it down himself. Crooks had liked Lennie. Most of the ranchers had liked Lennie. Like they'd like a little kid running between their legs.

Except Lennie had been too big to be a little kid.

When Slim's dog had a new batch of litter, he gave one to George. 'Lennie's,' he said by way of explanation.

Slim had been the only one there to understand. The only one of the four who'd seen Lennie's body just moments into death. That childish, happy grin on his face, thinking about a dream in his reach.

The truth was, it had, at that moment, never been farther from reach.

And Lennie hadn't even noticed the gun rising behind him. The fingers of a friend twitching on the trigger. The bullet ripping through his skin, leaving that grin a permanent imprint on his face – even when the body was rotting and being eaten alive in the emptied out barn.

He'd stayed on the farm but he hadn't gone near that barn for a long time.

But now the body was gone. The smell was gone. Candy and Slim's dog's first litter and Crooks were gone. Curley had a new wife – and maybe he'd forgotten the old. Maybe he'd forgotten Lennie. The name didn't crop up anymore.

Except with Slim, who was still there, and still remembered. And only to George, who never really said much to Slim.

Hence the new litter. And the puppies.

'Lennie was always talking to his.'

Lennie was always stroking soft things as well. And that had killed a puppy. That had killed Curly's wife. That had killed their dream.

He was too much a man and too old to cry, but he sometimes did anyway. At least the dog was young. At least it stood on its hindlegs and licked the tears off his face and left trails of saliva instead. At least it was soft. And warm. And unjudging. At least it sat there or ran across his lap and let him remember, let him sink in the past.

At least it let him soak in regret and guilt, even though he knew it was impossible and for the best.


End file.
